DAVID EVANS
“I’ll be heading back to Rallyday next year”
It wasn’t the most obvious of double acts. I mean, who would have thought the winning co-driver from the 1990 Plains Rally and Wales’ cabinet secretary for economy and infrastructure could have been so entertaining?
As far as press conferences go, Ken Skates and Howard Davies should be wheeled out much more often. Howard in particular was on sublime form.
The launch of this year’s Dayinsure Wales Rally GB might have been set in the idyllic Cheshire countryside, but there was plenty of corporate back-slapping going in the front room of Lord Cholmondeley’s castle – understandable when Skates links the event to the £3bn income generation from Wales’ automotive sector in recent years. But Davies kept it real in his own inimitable fashion.
One of the talking points of the day was the point which nobody was talking about officially – that being the decision to move Britain’s round of the world championship to the first weekend in October. I’ll admit I’m not a fan. I want it to go the other way. I want it in the first weekend in December. I want snow, ice, watery winter sunshine and as much mileage in the dark as there is in the daylight.
But I realise I’m in a minority and those days are done. The World Rally Championship is riding the crest of a wave right not and we need to keep that wave rolling. And getting bigger. And hiding Britain’s biggest rally away under the cover of darkness, making it harder and harder to get in (have you tried stomping through the woods in the pitch darkness? I have and it’s not to be advised…) is not conducive to bringing more folk through the door.
For the greater good, I’ll go with that building majority and accept longer days and even longer odds on snowbanks being leaned on in Aberhirnant.
And talking of building enthusiasm, did you go to Rallyday? I hadn’t been for a few years, but I have to say I’ll be back next year. A flat-four alarm call outside the window of Swindon’s Premier Inn was the perfect start to Saturday and the day just kept on giving after that.
There were more stars than you could shake a stick at and the quality of cars out there was second to none. One of the best things for me was seeing the ease with which Elfyn Evans now deals with these kind of days. We all know how the current British Rally Champion has grown as a driver in the last couple of years; witness the way he flung that M-sport Fiesta around Wiltshire, cocking a rear wheel under braking as he threw it into another series of doughnuts – it was ace! But out of the car he looks every bit a world champion in the making these days.
Another high point for me was seeing the Colin Mcrae tribute parade lap. There was a lump in the throat and a tear in the eye as those Subarus trundled past at the kind of speed the Scot himself would have been embarrassed by.
Pace wasn’t the point though. Appreciation was everything.